If you thought antisemitic outbursts were limited to college campuses, well, this story shows that’s not the case. The family of a 15-year-old student at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle has sued the school district after their daughter became a target for harassment based on her Jewish heritage. Because she’s a minor, the victim is only referred to by the initials M.K.L.
The lawsuit states that M.K.L. endured antisemitic slurs and threats, which were reported to Principal Dr. William Jackson and Vice Principal Makela Steward-Monroe, but no meaningful intervention was made.
According to the complaint, the harassment began following the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas.
M.K.L., a Jewish student, faced verbal abuse and threats from classmates, including being told to “kill herself” due to her Jewish identity.
The situation escalated with a planned walkout in support of Palestine, where M.K.L. was surrounded and spat on by other students.
“A student threatened to jump her if she wore Hanukkah pajamas to school one day… There was a group of students surrounding her and ganging up on her, and while they were talking to her, spit in her face,” her mother said.
The harassment continued to get worse until the end of the school year.
The lawsuit filed this month in King County Superior Court includes photos of swastikas drawn around campus and accounts of students telling her “Hitler’s plan should have worked,” “I hate Jews” and to kill herself for being Jewish, and calling her racist and Islamophobic…
“I never ever thought in my worst nightmares could I have imagined (my daughter) would be dealing with this sort of thing,” said the student’s mother, who asked not to be named out of concern for her daughter’s safety. The student and her parents are identified only by initials in the complaint.
“This was a horribly traumatic and devastating year for my child, and I don’t want anyone else to have to go through the same thing,” she said.
The culmination took place on May 22, 2024 when a mob of students appeared intent on beating her.
According to the complaint, on May 22, 2024, several students visited the girl’s classes throughout the day, trying to lure her into the hallway. By her final class, a group of about 20 students had gathered outside her classroom, demanding she come out.
Her teacher locked the door.
“We mostly shut the blinds but you could see some people trying to look in or banging on the door or yelling we know you’re in there come and get what you deserve,” the student said.
She was eventually escorted to the office by a security guard, and the school came up with a plan to have her be accompanied by an adult at all times while on campus.
Her mom said the plan did not last long, and she felt she was left with no other option other than to transfer her daughter to another school.
While all of this was building up, teachers and the school’s principle seem to have done nothing about it, according to the complaint.
The ninth-grade curriculum at Nathan Hale included a section on Holocaust studies with all ELA classes reading the book Night by Eli Wiesel. In class discussion, M.K.L. spoke about her relatives, telling of her grandmother who was orphaned when she fled Germany as a girl, and other family members including some of whom were killed in concentration camps. Other students laughed while the book was being read aloud in class, and this routinely went unaddressed by the teacher. M.K.L. was an obvious target of much antisemitism, but she was not the only one to be affected by this growing culture of hate. Another Jewish student reported on stophateinschools.org that a classmate stated that “the bad thing about this book is that Hitler didn’t finish.” Additionally, while discussing Night, a peer stared menacingly at M.K.L. and drew a swastika on her folder…
J.K. repeatedly contacted Dr. Jackson to report on the growing ubiquity of this hate symbol at school and its contribution to her daughter’s hostile learning environment. Dr. Jackson promised an investigation into this and to provide training for the school on antisemitism. To date, we are unaware of the results of any investigation or any substantive efforts to educate students about antisemitism. Dr. Jackson regularly did not respond to emails from J.K. about these urgent concerns. The school administration never attempted to mitigate this hostile environment for M.K.L. and other Jewish students, including not taking the cursory step of emailing the student body to address the swastikas appearing all over campus.
Dr. William Jackson, the school’s principal, is apparently a proponent of anti-racist education, but when it came to antisemitism and swastikas appearing around his school the complaint implies his only action was to hide the video evidence from the family.
J.K. reported this incident to Dr. Jackson and requested that he pull hallway security footage of this incident. To this date, the District has not provided this footage, which has almost certainly been deleted despite J.K.’s implicit request that it be preserved. Dr. Jackson’s failure to intervene by collecting this footage or otherwise addressing this violent and widespread antisemitism caused Plaintiff’s considerable distress and encouraged students to continue without any consequences.
The school eventually claimed there was no video of these incidents but that claim doesn’t seem credible.
“We know that they have cameras because they’ve also released some other unrelated footage,” one attorney, Seth Rosenberg, told the Washington Free Beacon. “They seem to have kept the things that aren’t helpful and apparently not kept the things that are.”…
A previous attorney for M.K.L.’s parents, Lara Hruska, requested surveillance footage of the May 22 incident soon after, emails provided to the Free Beacon shows. Months later, in October, the school district denied that video existed.
Hruska pointed out that Steward-Monroe told M.K.L.’s parents that she’d relied on video to count students gathering outside the classroom, suggesting it had been deleted. A school representative said Steward-Monroe couldn’t explain the discrepancy because she’d been on leave since August.
So the vice principal was on leave and when Dr. Jackson had a meeting with the family he refused to attend in person. Instead he used Zoom to join the meeting even though he was in a room down the hall. When he was asked what he’d done to address antisemitism at the school, he turned off his camera.
It all sounds like the usual school district cover up we’ve seen before. Something bad happens and no one is ever held responsible. Instead of firing someone or reprimanding them, they just move along to another job. In fact, while this was happening, Dr. Jackson was named secondary school principal of the year.
Join us in congratulating Nathan Hale High School principal, Dr. William Jackson. He was named this year’s Washington State Secondary Principal of the Year by the Association of Washington School Principals. pic.twitter.com/Iw3DOTmr09
— Seattle Public Schools (@SeaPubSchools) November 8, 2023
The Seattle Times said he was known for his “transformational leadership.”
Jackson was recently named Washington’s Secondary Principal of the Year by the Association of Washington School Principals, which said he received “a record-breaking number of nominations” from school, district and community members. His supporters called him a “connector of people” known for his “transformational leadership.” He will be recognized later this year in Washington, D.C., by the National Association of Secondary School Principals…
Each day, when he walks through the parking lots, hallways and athletic fields of Nathan Hale High, he looks students in the eyes and greets them as individuals, never forgetting how their experiences at a young age can make or break their will to learn.
He says work these days has never been more challenging or exciting. Every day, he leans into his “why,” his mission and purpose in education: advancing equity, access, justice and service through radical love…
“It is definitely my intention to become a superintendent,” he said.
He was at Nathan Hale for 8 years but he’s now moved on to a nearby district, leaving behind all that transformational leadership. He certainly seems to have transformed M.K.L.’s life, though I don’t see the equity or justice he promised.
